These transcripts deal with themes of mental illness and trauma
This conversation took place over skype with Cassandra and Lilth in their apartments in Chicago and Paris respectively. Cassandra met Lilith five years ago in Paris through a community of poets and they have remained friends.
So please state your name, your age, and your gender identity and presentation.
Uh, gender identity is…. Um, oh. Oh, okay. Okay. My name Lilith Hambi. I’m 24 years old… a woman, I guess. A female woman and yes, is that is? (Lilith laughs)
Yeah. So how have you been officially diagnosed with a mental illness and if so with what?
Um, I have not been officially diagnosed, but I have suspicions of anxiety and depression and… in the past, and there is again on my mother’s side, um, never been diagnosed but suspicions of borderline personality disorder.
Yeah. So it’s like recognizing the symptoms. Um, is there a reason that you’ve stayed away from… from diagnosis?
Um, I just actually never had an opportunity to, since growing up in the states, we didn’t have healthcare, so we couldn’t really afford to go to a doctor or anything like that. And then just when my family moved to France when I was 13, it was just a really tumultuous time for my parents and we didn’t… just never had… never had the opportunity really to be diagnosed.
So, um, okay, so like dealing… dealing with these symptoms, both you and kind of your family, but in a more like… individual way that’s not really interacting with the healthcare system? (Sound of doorbell ringing)
Pretty much (doorbell rings again).
So in… in terms of if you were to give like a personal history of… (doorbell rings again) Oh my God. Okay. Hold on. Someone is ringing my door ad nauseum. One second.
Oh, no worries.
(Pause)
I think my roommate got locked out (Both laugh).
No worries.
Okay. Sorry about that. Um… okay. But yeah, so if you were to give, um, kind of a personal history of your mental illness from start to finish, like from when the symptoms started manifesting to now… and your experience with it, like what would that be? So this is a broad general question, but it’s just kind of to set a baseline.
Okay. So I guess… I first became aware of any potential and mental illness when I was around 10 or 11, I guess like… so it was pretty early… entered puberty pretty early. So I kind of, maybe was feeling vulnerable at that time and I just started noticing like those… really dark suicidal thoughts. I tried to cut myself with a key when I was like 11 or 12. I have a very distinct memory of it. Um, I don’t know cause… this pretty, yeah… there was suicidal thoughts there… like there’s a lot of reasons more. Um, just kind of hard with the family. My mother was kind of abusive and difficult. Um, so that… and then it kind of just kind of, yeah… stayed pretty level throughout adolescence. Um, and like, especially… like when I was just… I was like around 11 or 12 we all… I was turning 13 we moved, we did a big move to France and that was really, really tough. Like I really wanted to stay in California, had a boyfriend, like I wanted to stay and it was really hard and that kind of… when I moved to France it was a really dark time there. Me and my siblings, we didn’t have a lot of contact with French people. Like the schools we were in, it was kind of hard to navigate and um…
Yeah but then things got kind of a bit easier to deal with when we went to go live with our dad cause up until that point we were with were living with my mom so when we went to go live with our dad, I was like 15 or 16 and then like… there was a lot more support and like, you know, listening and it was just a more healthier environment and… things got more manageable in my high school was pretty good. Doing like theater and writing and like focusing on the arts really helped me a lot I think because there was like a… it was a school that kind of encouraged that and was like open to it. So it’s that helped me deal. (inaudible) Uh, anxiety was always kind of there, put a lot of pressure on myself for various things. But um, eh, things are kind of hard again, after.. after graduating high school and then going to… moving to Paris for school…was kind of hard being alone and like just Paris… (Lilith laugh) just living in a really big city. Um, yeah.
And then things again… 18-19 like… got into a really complicated relationship..like I had sex for the first time. Older guy cheated on his girlfriend with me. That was… and it just threw me into like chaos cause I was kind of like… it was my first time. So… and then like, “I’m new in Paris, I’m alone. What the fuck” (Lilith laughs). Crazy period. And then we ended up going to like…going to school, ended up staying for two years in the same college, this guy hated me for some reason after that. He still hates me today. He’s the only ex I’m not friends with cause I’m always like, “let’s stay friends, you know, let’s try it”. But this guy, like he refuses to see me. Like he just… just… just said, it’s like a big… flat out hates me for some reason. Like, yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s… I probably don’t need to (inaudible), but yeah. So that was tough. That was tough. I actually like… when he broke up with me, I actually almost ran in front of a carr, which is, I don’t know if it was intentional or not or if I was just like… yeah.
Um, um, yeah that happened and then things were good. And like I finished school, I went to New York and it was fun. First months in New York were really fun. It was really therapeutic, weirdly because I was just like working with two really, really wonderful people who were… we were totally on the same wavelength. They were stop motion artists. We were just… it was really cool. Very very good. Felt like almost like parents in a weird way. I would call them my fairy God parents (Lilith laughs) So yeah.
Um, then yeah, then, but then like again New York was… it was kind of tough. I liked it. I mean overall like I really enjoyed the experience. It’s… yeah, just anxiety, anxiety always kind of gnawing away in the back. But depression kind of fluctuates over the years, but like the anxiety is definitely like… a static background music throughout the years. Yeah. And I don’t like… I don’t know, like I feel now I’ve been… getting more and more interested in like alternative medicine and healing, like… like medicinal plants and things like that. I don’t really trust the health care system, never had much invested there (Lilith laughs) so I’m like, yeah, let’s… let’s try these… these special plans and see… and so now I feel like… just better and better. Like almost, I feel like… even if things like… from day to day can be kind of tough, just like on the grand scheme of things, like I’ve never felt like… more like happier and healthier than I do today. So I’m really grateful for that. I know I must be talking a lot, but then again, you must be used to it…. but so, yeah (Lilith laughs). But, um, yeah, no, I feel that things can only get better. I mean if we… (inaudible) all your experiences forge you.
What are the… um, what are the forms of alternative medicine that you’re trying for specifically the anxiety and depression?
Um, okay. Well, I dunno… the consent form does… like, I have the right to… cause what I might say is not legal in the United States. So…
You can always denote, “I don’t want this going anywhere” if you want?
Just be careful with this information that I’m sharing with you, especially for you in the United States. Um, I’ve been interested in the medicinal properties and benefits of certain forms of uh… psychotropic plants such as, uh, various fungi so, but… uh, just met and just naturopathy in general, I’ve actually considered going back to school to…. So it’s just like natural healing techniques. Not necessarily just plants, also, like… Reiki and energy work and like meditation and stuff.
What are they… um, what effects of the, like… what effects do you feel that they have? Like obviously definitely improving, but like what do you feel is the interaction that goes on in your brain?
Well, when it comes to Psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychotropic mushrooms for example, there’s… there’s been research to show that it actually repairs brain cells like neurons. So there’s actually some interesting articles and can share with you if you want to know more, but it’s… yeah, they’ve been shown brains on psilocybin in CAT scans and it shows that the different like, synapses… there’s like… like a accelerated amount of synaptic, like activity and it’s actually been proven that it rebuilds brain cells. It’s been like studied to be in treatment for PTSD and depression and end of life anxiety and all these things. Really, it’s actually, I think it’s… it’s a… nothing’s miraculous, but like they’re really… it’s a medicine, like I felt the benefits of it myself and just… just all sorts of medicinal emotions really because there’s like a… but yeah, I just feel like… content. Like I don’t feel like I need more when I’m on, it’s just like everything… it just makes me grateful for what I have and like helps me feel connected to something bigger than me. It’s just… it’s almost like a spiritual experience.
And I was super religious when I was little, like, we were raised seventh day Adventist, so like, you know, just… just even walking in a forest just like, that’s all I need for the day to be good, you know? And it’s like, it just… it’s wonderful. It’s really wonderful. I would really love to be able to, you know, maybe push for legalization of certain plants because it’s just… it would just be really beneficial for humanity. I’m convinced.I think we can really be…. if we change…. if people were open to the idea of using these things, we could change our collective mindset and change society. And maybe that’s part of what we need… nowadays. We need like a complete like… direction shift in the world (Lilith laughs). So I think it could really… I dunno… I just feel really strongly that medicine as we know it is not the only form of medicine.
Do you think that there will… that there’s a possibility of it someday being used on a widespread scale for these medicinal purposes?
Well I hope so. And I know that um, in California they’re legal. In the Netherlands as well. I think it is possible. I think it was possible. Something I like to say is, “the future will be fungal” (Lilith laughs). But emotions in general, like even not for medicine, I’m going to… I’m sorry, I’m just going to like a sidenote, then we can get back on track. But just for the record, there’s an amazing mushrooms from Ecuador that breaks down plastic. And this can be like the future. (Both laugh) Okay. Sorry. End of mushroom rant.
You’re allowed to go on rants.
Okay, well there we go. We can go to the next question (both laugh).
Um, well, so the next question is like, so you gave your personal history, what do you think is the thing that you are proudest of in that?
Um, that is a good question… I guess I’m proud of being able… of learning… giving meaning to my art. I’m proud of my… I guess development as an artist, as well, which is pretty cool. But also just like, I feel proud when… somebody listens to me… just the chance to be listened to and like to learn how to exist in the world, if that makes sense?
Okay. So like proud of kind of creating the space for yourself in the world.
Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve done that little by little.
What are the… is there anything specifically, um, actionable that you… you do that, um, that tries to create that space?
Oh, I don’t know. (Inaudible). Living life. Not just living in dreams. But like actually living. Being in the world and kind of forcing myself out of my comfort zone, connecting with other people and just kind of learning to trust myself as well. I don’t know if that answers the question (Lilith laughs).
Yeah. Yeah that works. Um, is there anything specific that you would point to that you think you’re still struggling… that like… I mean like there are probably plenty of things that are still an ongoing struggle, but like what do you think, uh, right now is the thing that you’re struggling the most with about, uh, your mental illness?
Oh, um, hmmm… staying consistent and learning from my mistakes. Taking… I don’t think I take enough time to learn from past mistakes and like things like that. Self-restraint as well, just in general. I have to be like… I’m so… I just remember just times of being addicted to sadness, I think like it’s just this weird feeling… I don’t know. So I sometimes would like… almost like wallow…in the sadness and I just… I have a tendency of doing that and I need… need to like, change my mind in a moment. Just tell myself it’s okay. We’ll relativize things. Yeah.
Uh, what do you think attracts you to the sadness?
It’s beautiful (Lilith laughs). I don’t know, I mean the weird thing… sadness is… I don’t know, it helps you reshape things.
Reshape things?
I don’t know. It just… sometimes… I don’t feel like I’m attracted to it, I just find myself in these states and I just really wants to be there. I find myself bumping up against the same glass walls around me. I don’t know. Just… strange.
Um, so people kind of have different ways of conceiving of their mental illness, kind of… Um, so like for anxiety, you described it as kind of background music in a way. Um, are there any other ways that you can see of that or of depression? Like whether you externalize it or consider it something internal? Like what… how do you place yourself in a relationship to it?
Sometimes I feel like it’s like a dark cloud or like… that’s like trailing behind me. Like or like… just like… I always imagine…. I’ve been trying to like, you know, confront my darkness more and more, like trying to get comfortable with it and every time I plunge into it, it feels like an ocean. Feels like something that just completely envelopes you. Something you have to fight your way out. Kind if like if you’re drowning. And then like… if you’re wallowing in your sadness, you just drown but then like trying to get better is like trying to swim up to the surface and yeah, kind of feels just like either a dark cloud, just like a gaping darkness. Sometimes tinged with color, depends on the mood. I feel like it’s more… less and less like…subscurity but it just reminds me of when I was little, we’d go in the ocean and then when it gets really, really deep and you can’t see the bottom and it’s kind of like really strange and mysterious and you’re like, “what’s down there?” I guess it kind of feels like that.
What are… what are the specifics sorts of situations that um, make it worse than the day to day basis? Like what causes spikes in anxiety or depression for you?
Well, um… (Lilith laughs) Thinking too much, ruminating, I just start to circle around the same idea or like corner of the mind for too long. That definitely makes it worse. Also just assuming the worst in every day life. Like, um, like for example if I’d seen something that often… can put me into a bad mood, and this is… I think I feel like… something I’ve learned about myself is that I can be kind of jealous sometimes of people and then like, in a relationship, lke I’ll just assume certain things about people, and I… wish I wouldn’t because sometimes people don’t always have bad intentions. Not jealous, yeah, but just like I have a tendency of like being very like kind of… a deep sense of distrust. I have kind of these dark things that… I have to be careful with that. Yeah. Because I really don’t like that about myself.
So do you feel like… if you were looking at your life in terms of, um, having different spheres, like maybe there’s a work sphere and art sphere, which are kind of the same for you, but like… like work, art, like interpersonal relationships, family, all these different spheres. Would you say like, um, like… interpersonal relationships, um, whether that’s like… regardless of the type, would you say that’s where a lot of the stress is coming from or… or is it just kind of like dispersed throughout?
Yeah, perhaps, or maybe just more precisely with certain people. Like, talking with my mom is stressful for her. I think she… she causes so much… I mean, I don’t want… I don’t want to be like, point fingers and be like, oh it’s so and so’s fault. But I think a lot of what she did in my life explains mental illness. (Inaudible). I dunno. I’m sorry, what was the question? Could you repeat the question?
Just, um, I was just asking like what spheres of life contain the most, um, I guess anxiety for you?
Yeah. Family… number one is totally family. Can be very stressful. It used to be school, but I’m getting a handle on it. I mean, yeah. Work. I don’t know. I guess if I’m lucky I can do some really soothing work. Work is nice actually, I really like working, just feels like I have some potential with something. Um…Interpersonal relationships, they’re always kind of… it’s delicate terrain. I’m still learning how humans works (Lilith laughs) Who isn’t, right? (Inaudible)
On… on that note, um, how much do the people around you know about your depression and anxiety?
Not many. It’s kind of a taboo subject in the family and nobody really wants to talk about it. It’ll come up in volcanic eruptions. Like, “Why didn’t you go see your psychiatrist?” (said mock yelling) But um, yeah… I think it should be like… it would be helpful if we could just talk about these things, especially since we all know but nobody wants to say anything.
The people who… who do know, um, like why… why are they… are they mostly friends or romantic partners or like why do you choose those specific people to talk about it with?
I don’t know. Because you feel like you can trust them. Like you won’t be judged. And just some…some people understand because they’ve come to terms with their own mental illness or their histories, family histories and it’s just like… it’s um, certain soothing qualities of certain people that makes… there’s just some people that you feel at ease with cause you know that this sort of… like talking about this sort of thing was just a huge… you really like…. (inaudible) yourself to be so vulnerable. You know, it’s like I am, this little…mortal thing that is… and other people have probably felt that and can understand and like, and I’m pretty sure my family is… well we’re all like, you know, we are all equally sensitive, caring people and we would understand each other. I just think that we need to talk more. Communication is important. I don’t know. People who won’t hurt you… won’t use your vulnerability as cannon fodder against you, which just happened to me. It hurts (Lilith laughs).
What sort of, um, conversations do you wish you could have about it? Like, um, whether with your family or with just people out in the world? Like how do you wish you could talk about it?
Hmm. I wish I could… it could be spoken about in an understanding way, in an empathic way. Like… cause it’s… it’s, in a…not necessarily a pathological way, just as kind of like… we’re human beings and I’m not the only one who’s probably like feeling this way on a daily basis and I think just in general these discussions should be like normalized and just… maybe not normalized.. it’s not the right word, but like kind of… it should be out in the open. We should be talking about these, you know, these things honestly. And like practically because you know, like everybody… maybe not everybody but like lot of people in the world are affected by these things and if we’re not able talk about it, we’re not able to heal.
And then… I think that’s what we need. We need some mass healing. Like I think humanity has been traumatized by its own history of like violence and war and just even in the last century, like two world wars. Like you see your grandparents and like they… my grandmother is probably depressed as well, but she’s from another time when you can’t really talk about… it’s really taboo to show that you were anything other than optimal, you know. But I think just to like talk about it more and heal together as a species because like we were confronted with so much and we need each other. Like I think this is like the societal change that… we’re not just atomized beings in an empty university, like we live on a planet that’s… so special in the solar system, in this universe, it’s… it’s amazing to be living on earth. And we need to take care of it and want need to take care of each other. We just need to love each other (Lilith laughs)
Like when the sixties would happen, like it’s… it just, it could happen again like in a more stable way. Like we can really change… if we change ourselves, we’re able to change society. And I think the first step to solving any… and confronting issues of the future like, you know, resource crisis, climate change, migration, like all these things that were like… these challenges that we’re facing as a species. We need to change our minds first and then we change each other. We all like, I dunno… (Lilith laughs) it’s all cyclical but I have hope. I believe in it. My dad would always say, “Donc il y a la vie, il y a l’espoir” like, as long as there’s life, there’s hope and I believe that’s (Lilith laughs)… what keeps me going.
So you feel that… informs the way that you interact with other people with mental illness? I mean it seems like it informs the way you act with other people in general. But I guess specifically in this case…?
Um, yes. I think that once you…once you know how you’re feeling, uh, how it affects you, I think you start to see it in other people as well. Like paying a bit more attention to like, you know, “she looks exactly like me on a bad day, like she’s looking down at her feet. Like there’s like all these signs and you can just be more empathic and just be like, “hey, you know, if you need to talk”” I think it definitely lets perceive people differently and like be more forgiving because you wouldn’t want to be like judged. So definitely helps with empathy.
How does that um, function with like your mom because that seems like a more fraught relationship and like her also dealing with some things. Like how… how do you navigate that?
Um, just try to… I guess I like to imagine her as like a young girl sometimes like… and just try to… like of all the stories she’s told me, realizing she’s a fragile person as well. When I was a little like my mom, she was like, an authority, you know, her word was, you know the truth and she… she just came off as powerful, menacing like this… almost like tyrannical person in my… when I was a child, more and more like I see her growing old and I see myself, you know, living my life and you know, and gaining confidence in myself and she’s… I can see her just for her… I can see her vulnerabilities now and she’s not as threatening as she was before, like when I was little.
More and more, I just try to imagine her as like the little girl who was sent away from… from Mexico to the foster family in United States. You know, and just being completely lost in a new world and alienated and I can… like, I just see… what I see is a frightened little girl and you can’t, you know, hate a frightened child and I know deep down some part of my mom is still there. She’s still this sad, lost, little girl and I just need to help her, you know, and I can’t hate her and… I just have to be careful with myself, you know? That I don’t…I have to take care of myself in relating to her. But I do want to help her, if I can and I… I can’t hate her anymore. She’s imperfect but that’s fine because so am I and… all the people. But this has definitely been a very, very, very recent like…like kind of attitude. Before I would just block her out of my life. Tried to block her out of my life for so long. But you know, like… it’s like… no matter what, she’s the person who gave you life, whether you like…whether you asked her for it or not, she’s still there and anything good you appreciate about life kind of or I kind of owe it to her so I have to be… I feel obligated to be respectful of at least. Not like how I was raised… not as dismissive as I was in the past, or frightened because I just really want the best for her and would really like her to better as well.
Do you feel like that’s your, um, general feeling on… on I guess, um, people enacting abuse? Like how… I’m trying to… I’m trying to think of a way to phrase this. Um, like there are a lot of cycles of abuse that go on in society and in… in the world. Like what… what is your general stance towards the abusers? Like this is a very specific case that is very fraught because she’s your… she’s your mother. Um, and so there’s a lot of different emotions going on there, but like how… how in a more general sense do you feel… do you think you feel like it’s the… the same in a way or like, is that still like a complicated thing that you’re figuring out or…?
I guess.. over time I’m more and more interested in trying to take a distance…at least in an individual level. Like for the abuse that, um, my siblings and I experienced, which was physical violence and verbal violence, things like that. I just remember like for example my mother, she would hit us with wire hangers and belts and shoes and like, um, when she got angry and we were making too much noise or something like that. And I remember she would say that that’s the way she was raised as well and I was just like… apparently in happens Mexican culture, not exclusively in Mexican culture, but just… it’s just a way of disciplining children… I guess it’s a Catholic, I don’t know if it’s a Catholic thing… this is like a big family thing that, you know, we have so many children, you don’t really know how to get them to… you just hit them. So, but my mom was used to that and that’s the way she raised us. And it’s kind of like, yeah, I definitely like… it definitely like affects a child’s development to be, uh, to experience (inaudible) abuse. And I just think that… it is definitely a cycle. It’s definitely a cycle. It needs to be broken at one point in the family line. Um, that’s kind of one of the reasons why I don’t want children is cause like… I don’t want to find myself doing that to a child one day. So… just trying to understand from a psychological point of view, like understand why…. why do people abuse others? Why do parents abuse children? (inaudible) We just have to find ways to break the cycles.
So generally trying to adopt a policy of… of understanding if not necessarily… forgiveness of everyone– I don’t know forgiveness is the right word, but…but trying to establish understanding?
Yeah.
Um, shifting gears a little bit, um, so you gave a personal history of… of mental illness. So if you were to give a personal history of your experience identifying as a woman, um, both in terms of kind of the more internal experience, but also like external… kind of the way that you have been treated in the world as such, what would that personal history look like?
(Lilith laughs) Being a woman… It’s interesting like I… when I was… when I was very little I didn’t feel like… it was my subjective experience to not feel like a boy or a girl. Like it’s kind… I don’t know if it’s a general thing with kids or when exactly your gender… like your awareness of your gender really starts to affect but for such a long time. I was just… I was just neutral. Like I liked playing with my brother and climbing trees and like running around and I also liked, you know, brushing my hair and like playing with dolls with my sisters like, it was equal. Like it was almost like there was almost no boundaries and like, yeah, I kind… I mean yeah, it’s kind of always in the background. Like in America it’s kind of like, you go to Toys R Us and here’s like the pink doll isle, and the blue… it’s just like… it’s… it’s just weird.
And it’s like also because I was growing up, I never felt like, um, very attractive because I was a bit overweight and just… (inaudible) weird (Lilith laughs) just felt like not very feminine, even though like our mom would always like… make us aware of that. I… in my head, I just didn’t want to. Like I was kind of like, I just want to do something else, like there’s no word for just like… you know, um, uh… so like I dunno, it’s just being a woman… I just feel like it’s a bit strange sometimes just this definition of what womanhood can be or maybe it’s just cause we have a narrow definition of what it is. So I like to… I definitely have a deep appreciation of femininity, and like gratitude as well.
There’s so many, um, especially since I discovered the work of Starhawk, so she’s a wiccan writer and she writes about goddess worship, like witchcraft. Basically in her… in her world view, witchcraft is a form of like goddess worship instead of, uh, like worshipping a god… like a male figure. She’s looking at more like matriarchal cultures, matriarchal religions. That’s very powerful. It’s kind of like… it broadens the definition of what it could… what it means to be a woman. And I think that I don’t like being enclosed, being like mentally caged and herded into this idea of there’s one way of being a person or a woman in the world and… you know, goddess worship shows that, you know, there’s like there’s many… there’s many different forms of goddesses, many different forms of being in the world as a uh, as someone who identifies as a woman. You know, it shows the beauty of nature as well. Like its diversity. Um, I don’t know if that answers your question. But um…women… being a woman. It can be fun, especially when you start to appreciate sexuality… definitely for me, for a long time I would l(inaudible) about it. Christianity (Lilith laughs) was a traumatic experience, but like more and more I’m just like really enjoying like… being an adult woman. Like adult sexual woman, whatever that means. So you definitely get to… if you learn how to play, it’s fun, but you got to be careful as well not to like… enclose yourself, not to cage yourself.
As someone who’s lived in many different places and experienced a lot of different cultures, um, are there any differences that you kind of, uh, noticed in sort of the expectations of what it means to be a woman?
There’s always an emphasis on like how you look… from (inaudible) in France and in the states. Women were just forced to… to be so surface obsessed. Which is… not a bad thing, but it can… yeah, that’s a limiting factor. Both in the states and France, it’s just like, “oh, you’re just a pretty thing in the background”, you know, that type of thing. Um, yeah, I mean like I guess in my mind, like I was saying I want to… my gender was very neutral form. Like I was just… I didn’t want really want to be a boy or girl inside my head. But my mom was like, really insistent… cause we were three girls… that we be pretty like, dress pretty and look nice and kind of, you know, she put us in like… beauty pageants and like weird shit like that growing up and I never liked it, I was like, this is weird…this is really disturbing actually. Like, um, she would take us to like, um, movie shoots for commercials and it was bizarre. She wanted us to be like… child stars, I think… and I don’t know why.
Did you feel like that was kind of valued above other qualities for you?
I don’t know. It was when we were really little, like we were like six or seven. So, like at that time I was… I just found it really.. just like I didn’t like it and it definitely gave me an awareness, you know, of being female and looked at and kind of, you know, the male gaze and that type of thing. It’s a bit weird. I guess it’s just kind of a… side of being a woman that can make me feel uncomfortable. Like learning to deal with the discomforts of unwanted attention, like that type of stuff. That’s something that I kind of always want to (inaudible), but um, uh, but yeah, I wish… I wish it wasn’t so… everything….
There weren’t such strict lines?
Yeah. I wish people were just a bit freer to just… identify what we want or to not identify at all. (Lilith laughs) Like why is it so important? Fair enough, people want to have babies, they can go and have babies…I don’t want children. Like I don’t mind taking care of children, like adopting, but I don’t want like biological children. So like… sex for procreation, you know? So just do I have to… (inaudible)
So…on that note… it seems like there’s a little bit of of neutrality that you still kind of feel, but in… in the… like you still do have connections with… with womanhood.
Yeah.
Um, so like what, what does that… like what does… what does that mean to you? Like what is your definition of it? So you talked a little bit about, um, reading, uh… uh… god, what was the name…
Starhawk?
Starhawk, yes. Um, so like that seems to have been kind of crucial in sort of defining for you your relationship to femininity. So how… like if you were to talk about, um, what that definition is for you personally in your life. So I’m not asking you for a universal definition, but for you specifically.
Oh… interesting. Strength is definitely a big part of it (Lilith laugh) because being a woman is tough. Maybe we don’t… we’re not…being labeled as witches you know, we’re not being burned at the stake anymore, but still, you know, it can be kind of tough. I think women are strong. (inaudible). Even those who don’t consider themselves strong. There’s also… yeah, I hope I don’t fall into like…(inaudible). Like…care. Like there’s a sensitivity in womanhood, like we have the ability to love. I think it’s just something… the ability to give life means that you are able to sacrifice part of yourself for another so I think that the person who has a body capable of giving birth has the ability to feel for other people as well and to care for others. Does it have to be a woman? I don’t think so, but just anybody who knows me ability to give life for other people and I think that’s beautiful. That’s something that woman can be, it should be….(inaudible) and their ability to empathize with people. Just being… being a woman means being strong and caring and… just sensitive. Understanding.
Is there… is there anything… kind of like specific that you feel like you’ve struggled most with it? Like you talked about as… you were a kid… when you were a kid, you didn’t terribly kind of want that identity, um, and you… and you didn’t want like the constraints of it. Um, is there any specific part of being someone who’s perceived as a woman in the world that… that you’ve struggled most with or… like creating a distinction between perceiving and identifying, is there anything about, um, womanhood that you’ve, you struggle most with?
Periods (said jokingly, Lilith laughs) That’s too easy. Um… maybe it’s just being perceived as weak or less than, you know, this idea that… in my head I’m just… I am what I am and and it’s… some people, especially men, they just.. they just… they just perceive a woman as something less than them, you know, like less than male. And it’s just in culture in general. Like this idea, you know, women are just weak and need to be saved and it’s like, well some… I think it makes a lot of men uncomfortable… a strong woman makes a lot of men… The idea of a strong woman makes a lot of men uncomfortable and it just sucks. It sucks that we’re still there. Things are changing (inaudible).
Do you think there’s a sphere of your life? I think it exists in a lot of different spheres, but I think people feel it in differing amounts depending on what their life is. So like… what …do you feel it more like in an intellectual sense or like an emotional sense or sexual or like in what… in what ways do you most often feel like that is enacted on you? Does that make sense?
In many ways. In a huge… interconnected way, like socially, like I think in work, um, in my school, like for example, like the school that I studied at was for 3d animation, which is male dominated and like…computer technologies, computer science in general… guys… there’s way too much testosterone in certain rooms (Lilith laughs), but… you can understand like in any of those fields that yeah, you can feel this bubble that you’re… you just feel it before your eyes. It’s like, okay.
Um, yeah, mostly work and school a lot of the times. In my personal life, more and more I try to be more forthright. I am trying to be more and more like… vocal and trying to assert myself in the world in general. Definitely work. My family is pretty understanding. We’re all pretty… the males in my family…. they know what it’s like cause they got a strong woman in the house… my grandmother is just like… she’s like a warrior. My sisters are all amazing… my brother as well. And my brother…we’re all aware of each other’s strength. (inaudible)
Um, if you were to point to something specific about mental illness that you struggle with the… or I guess like… I guess I asked you what you struggle with most. This is a redundant question. Nevermind. Um, I’ve… I’ve…the question list has been changing over time, so I’m finding that some of my questions are now redundant because they’re kind of… like people answer them in the context of other questions.
Oh, oh, it’s okay. I don’t know what type of bullshit answers I’ve been giving anyways. So… (both laugh)
They have not in bullshit answers. They’ve been excellent answers.
I feel like I’m just blabbing. (Lilith laughs)
You can always change things if you want to. So the… the next question is, um, do you feel like your identity as a woman has interacted with your mental illness, um, in any way? So that’s maybe like… an example of that would be how… people treat your mental illness because of your womanhood, but like you don’t talk… like you don’t talk to many people about it. So maybe how people treat the symptoms of it or like… that’s one example of a possible interaction. Um, but like, yeah. Do you feel like there’s any way that those two identities have indirect?
Yeah, I think like on a deep time level, and then on a more recent level, I think definitely being like a daughter, (inaudible) my sisters were two girls and one boy, my mom really wanted a son. She had been waiting for a son and I think she definitely treated us differently than my brother did. (inaudible) Like my brother was the apple of her eye. She was just full of… I mean like she loved us and I mean…she loved us in weird way and in a very twisted way. But my brother, she doted up. She really loved him, you know, in a specific way I guess. Um, very early on I was like, okay, there’s something weird here, you know? There was definitely… and then the more recently, I guess… I mean I guess that’s why I have a hard time opening up to people about this and just telling people it’s just like… I secretly don’t like the idea of being seen as weak or vulnerable.
Like for very long time I had to be strong and like… you know… go through a lot of things, I had to take care of my siblings or my mom in the states and stuff, I had to advocate. I felt like I needed to be strong all the time. Like my dad would say, “you gotta be strong”. And I was like, okay, can’t mess this up, you know? And just like this idea also that being a woman, you’re weak, you can’t… you open up about these things and then you’re perceived as weak. So I’m not going to, and I’m just going to lock it up inside and be okay. Like no (inaudible) I dunno maybe, but that’s why there’s… there’s something, especially like really um, healing and helpful when you can connect with other women who have been in similar situations. I’d say like guys appreciate it as well but it’s different. I mean, I think we’re human beings, we all understand each other. But there’s something about talking with… woman identifying people who have been in similar situations and have stories with their moms and stuff. You can talk to them about your experiences, and hear about theirs and you’re just like, oh, that makes…. You understand, understand things differently. But then again, you can probably do this with men as well, it just depends on the man and the sensitivity… I don’t know… yeah.
So you’ve talked a little bit about, um, how your financial state affected your experience, about how your…your mom being Mexican affected your experience and a little bit about how being raised in like a very religious background affected a, um, so the question is like, what other factors have affected either of these identities? So do you want to elaborate on any of these or talk about any other identities that you have?
Definitely being like this…. third generational. Third generational immigrants that have kind of traveled… kind of dislocated and kind of… military family. My Dad was a marine… navy, so we’re moving around a lot. Um… being kind of meetings nomadic makes you get this sense of instability. Um, or kind growing up like… we had this…I don’t know if you could say we were poor but we didn’t have a lot of meals growing up. Um, I think it’s just the way my mom… my mom just didn’t know how to save money. She was just bankrupt all the time. And that’s the reason why dad was so absent because he was working at sea and like sending her money, but like she just didn’t know how to handle it well. So we kind of grew up, you know, sometimes we lived in nice apartments and sometimes, you know, most of the time we were buying stuff from the dollar stores. It was just a weird sort of like life…. and then moving around a lot.
And… even in the San Diego was my hometown like where I spent most of my time, we moved around a lot in San Diego county just from like different (inaudible). Um, yeah, it was the sense of being dislocated constantly, just always, um, being on the move and… kind of unstable thing that’s just like a migrant… cause like my, my grandmother was… she migrated from… southern like… central Mexico to the border and then to the states. And my mother migrated when she was five. So like immigrant family definitely, contributed to that and… money I mentioned that… military, which is weird. I guess just maybe individually… like on a personal basis just… I don’t know… maybe… how to explain it… not having like a… roots. This idea of feeling a bit rootless. I don’t know. It’s slightly alienating. It sometimes feels freeings but sometimes… can’t really identify with people. Because you didn’t just… you just didn’t share those like experiences… some people… you hear stories of people who grew up in the same place all their lives… I don’t know. I mean there are a lot of migrants nowadays, people are always running around, sometimes you hear certain stories and you’re like, “I kind of wish things were that simple”. I don’t know. I think it’s a richness it’s a way seeing these things… and like the complexities, yeah. Almost like a mosaic or stained glass that has been broken many times but is still whole.
Yeah. (Pause) Um, so would you say the… um…would you say that… that your experience being a woman, I… I would… I think you’ve already kind of answered this in like… in your definition of what it means to be a woman for you, but like would you say your experience has affected, um, intimacy in any way? So that can be either platonic or emotional or physical or romantic or sexual, like any… any type of… of intimacy.
Oh yeah, I guess trust issues. It just… it takes a lot for me to trust someone really to… to build a relationship with trust. (inaudible) Sort of like self protection. It’s almost like… it’s almost like in The little Prince like the Fox…almost like, we have to tame each other first (Lilith laughs). It’s mostly like, I think it’s probably a good thing. It’s good to keep… and it’s the reason why, when you walk around a forest, animals will flee, because… defense mechanism. You’re preserving yourself in a certain way. It can actually be really lovely if another person’s that way and then we’re willing to move out of our comfort zones for each other. So I appreciate that. That sort of shyness, find it really endearing. But then again it can be isolating cause sometimes we’ll…um… because I don’t trust someone or don’t feel comfortable, I’ll kind of just be by myself. (Lilith laughs) I’ll just be in the comfort of my solitude. Which I need… I do need my alone time. Definitely natural introvert. It’s also nice to push yourself out of your comfort zone sort of. (inaudible). So… yeah (Lilith laughs) Sorry, I feel like I’m talking such bullshit.
No! You’re not talking bullshit!
I just feel like I’m talking a lot.
That is totally fine. I am… this is for you to talk. This is specifically an opportunity for you to talk.
I rarely get the chance to talk like this. So thank you (both laugh).
Um, I was going to ask, like… that seems kind of part and parcel with how mental illness has affected intimacy for you. Like that kind of seems like a conjunction of those two identities, uh, like… kind of guiding how you, um, navigate intimacy. Do you feel like that’s true or like… I don’t want to put words in your mouth.
Could you repeat the question? (Lilith laughs)
Um, so the description you gave of… of how, um, your experience as a woman has… has affected the way that you navigate intimacy. It also seemed like part of that might… might have been, um, guided by your experience with mental illness. So the question is like, how does mental illness affect intimacy? And do you feel like it’s kind of like in the same sort of way?
Well, like I mentioned earlier about the empathy, like it really…experience with mental illness allows empathy because you can see… once you experience it in yourself, you can see it in other people, I think it just makes you… I don’t want to say a better human being, but like a person who is able to understand… like a more understanding person. So like for example, if I’m with someone who… like I know they either… if they told me, or I just feel it, they are (inaudible), I’m going to try to be there for them. Like in my own limited way. Cause of course… I can’t love everybody but… I wish love to all humanity. And healing but… those people who come into my life… especially if they’re fragile, I just want to like…I know what it’s like to be fragile… I wish… I just want to take care of them. So like it definitely… like if someone tells me they have mental illness, if there is a situation, I try my best to treat them how I would want to be treated. With intimacy… it allows…. it’s extremely important to have communication. I think it helps. And intimacy takes so much… it takes so much trust and communication. Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah.
Um, do you have anything you want to add or talk about that you don’t feel it was really covered by these questions?
I guess…Yeah. Just the idea of catharsis and healing in general, because I definitely… we’re definitely not alone in feeling this way. If I could just… leave a message, it’s that it’s possible to be better and I think we should help each other. And just the idea that catharsis through understanding and creativity as well… like trying to share our worlds… yeah just the ability to heal, to feel whole and… catharsis through… through all… I dunno. I don’t know where I’m going with this.
That’s ok.
Yeah, cause personally I feel like I focused on the dark for way too much time and I wish… I just want to flip a coin and see that y’know, even if things are dark, there are still bits of light. (inaudible) There’s good in the bad, there’s bad in the good. I think… in the end we just have to… learn the lessons that each experience has to teach us. I don’t know if things happen for a reason but at least we can learn from them and grow. And no matter how bad things have bee, there’s hopefully still some tomorrow and there’s still dreams and good people and… I don’t know… life goes on, whether we like it or not. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s a beautiful experience. And it’s so… it’s rare… like you wonder why, why are we alive? It’s amazing. It’s this whole idea of looking up at the night sky and just… hy are we human at all? Why do we get this chance to live? Just makes you really appreciate. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, I’m glad I didn’t commit suicide when I was 12 or 13 cause life is… is really beautiful and interesting and I kind of just more and more want to live it. So that’s a persona evolution that’s definitely very recent. It’s still like a young tree, it’s growing. (inaudible) More and more I want to see what life has to offer, no matter what life has to offer.
That’s a big feeling.
(Lilith laughs)
So it’s very important to me that these are more like… conversations than flat up interviews. Like you’ve sat and you’ve talked with me about these hard things for a while so I want to open it up to you to have the ability to ask any questions you want to me, whether about the project or if you want to ask me any of these questions. I just want to, um, I don’t want this to be one sided. I want to give you the opportunity, uh, to have the same sort of vulnerability from me.
Out of curiosity, what sparks the idea for the project? Because it’s.. it’s a really brave and it’s… it’s not easy. It must not be easy for you as much as it has not been easy for me. Cause it takes a lot of like… yeah. You really like… like you’re asking people to be honest. So it’s a lot to take in. So what motivated you?
Um, I mean, so I feel in… in, in my life, um, mental illness and being perceived as a woman have been like, things that have guided a lot of… of… of my life. Both in positive and negative ways. Um, and they’re very fundamental to who I am. Um, but I hadn’t ever really thought about the intersection of them and how they work together. But there… there is a lot of intersection in terms of like… sometimes it’s that they’re like stigmatized in… in similar ways. Um, historically there is a lot about hysteria and things like that. So I think, um, the fact that these two identities felt so crucial kind of made me want to investigate, uh, the… the point of interaction between them, um, and made me want to… um, talk to other people and to see what their experiences were, I guess.
Yeah. You can kind of feel definitely. Can kind of feel that uh… it’s almost like a writer and they’re writing a novel. You can definitely tell that it’s their life… the way that you presented it was very professional like, an interview for a project, but I can tell… like feel… you’re also asking yourself these same questions in a way and I think that… it’s very strong. There’s a lot of strength in your process and… yeah, a lot of self healing as well. Like I think… (inaudible). As an artist especially, it’s very honest.
The Cassandra Transcripts 